Michael W. Twitty

ugh I once again forgot to put in the right edition (and I thought I did, but maybe this was before I deliberately entered ISBN numbers) so my page numbers are off.

anyway, Twitty is a lyrical author, and here he has crafted a gorgeous, personal narrative that feels the weight of historical trauma and a yearning for what was lost due to institutional slavery obscuring names, places, and lineages. This knowledge (and book) is derived from his crowdfunded rel="nofollow" target="_top">Southern Discomfort tour, seeking out the old foodways and digging into his own ancestry with genealogists and historians. The family tree in the book goes back generations, but this is the achievement of hard digging, as many slave records merely give first names, if at all as part of the dehumanizing process.

The structure felt rambly, which I initially disliked, but in the author's note at the end, he says if he could've given a linear timeline he would've considered it, but instead the genre-shifting narrative that revealed itself to him as he learned about the ancestors is what he arrived at, and it makes the story all the more stronger. At the end of most chapters are relevant recipes, though once again I did not try to cook any of them.

Between genealogists and a DNA test, Twitty finds he's about a quarter Caucasian, and there are several points in his great^3 grandparent line where forcible assault introduced white men into his family tree, and this is explored through visiting both the Bellamy plantation and a few weeks in Ireland/England (though for the latter, he finds more familiar culinary DNA between the foodstuffs of west Africa to the South than England).

I initially started reading this last spring, but had to return it. I resumed at the beginning of 2019 when a library hold came back. Might reread earlier chapters too.… (mere)

This is a fascinating, masterfully researched book that explores not just African American foodways but genetic (and archival) genealogy, oral history, and the cultivation of a personal and spiritual connection with one's ancestors. Twitty's a great storyteller (if you can see him speak, I recommend it), and comes from a family where everyone seems to live into old, old age, so his experience of history has an immediacy that's often lost when we talk about the antebellum and post-Civil War period.

Had to return this one to the library before I was finished, as so often happens with my nonfiction reads - hoping to finish it up one of these days.… (mere)